I've been meaning to do hydrostatic (dunk tank) body fat testing for ages (thanks SlowSure!) and today I finally did it.

JBs - it's an expense that might not fit into everyone's budget, but if you can swing it I cannot recommend it highly enough (Mine was $49 initial, $39 for follow up).

I found out that at 201 lbs and 5 foot 3 inches, my lean body mass is 62.75% and weighs 126.6 pounds. My body fat percentage is 37.2% and weighs 75 pounds.

Here's the valuable information I found out:

1. If I don't lose lean body mass, my goal weight is much too low. The healthy body fat percentage for a woman in my age group is 23-35% If my lean body mass stays the same, at 23% body fat I would weigh 164 pounds! Of course, although I'm going to try not to lose lean body weight, I might lose some anyway.

2. I can now do a much more accurate daily calorie expenditure calculation knowing my body fat percentage. The body fat testing report said my RMR (resting metabolic rate) is 1746, and "the world's most accurate calorie calculator" gave me sedentary TDEE of between 1835 and 2121, with two at approximately 1935. Dr. Johnson's calculator puts my "no exercise" up day at 1937 - spot on for me).

3. When I get to 185, I will in fact be under 32% body fat and not be obese (see signature goal). That is a lot more immediately reachable than the BMI non-obese weight threshold of 168.

So happy I did this! It was much less embarrassing than I thought it would be.

The guy recommended not to go under RMR, because then he says you are losing lean body mass. I think, though, that ADF is a bit different and spares lean body mass vs. every day calorie cutting. He also recommends adding back exercise calories for the same reason, and I got a personalized print out of what I would burn doing different activities with my weight and body composition.

You probably will lose some lean tissue as you lose weight and it's not necessarily a bad thing. It takes less muscle to just move around at a lower weight - say, 150 lbs - than at 200 lbs. Just getting out of a chair is like squatting with 50 lbs of weight. You just naturally will lose muscle to support that lower weight.

Keep in mind that there will be lean body mass loss, it is inevitable when you are losing weight no mater how much you do to preserve it. So if you are ultimately aiming for a specific BF% your ultimate weight will be a moving target as you lose lean body mass.

When I started at 350, after they figured out my BF %, they told me that to get to 20% body fat my weight would be 266 and I'm around 194 now with around 16% body fat. Obviously I lost a lot of lean body mass. But this is expected, I needed a lot more muscle to move around a 350 pound body than I do to move around 194 pound body.

Now that you have a baseline to work with you can go back to be retested to see how both LBM and BF are tracking with the goal of losing more fat than LBM.

Yeah, I figured I will lose some lean body mass, but I still think there's a good chance I will wind up at a healthy body fat at above my 135 current goal ... but I'll keep you posted! I'll be going back in 3-6 months with the goal to lose more fat than LBM in that time.

I hope you find one, Cindy! I adjusted my goal to the top of the "large frame" healthy goal range, since today's test (and other tests) confirmed that's where I belong, but really I'm going for a healthy body fat percentage. I'm so excited that my goal may be a bit closer than I thought.

Interesting! Glad u got to do the fancy water weighing Chris.
So do u wear ur bathing suite for the test?
Mike that makes since to me.
Never thought about it before.
Hummmm
My plain bathroom scale show bf at 33% now. Ugh
Once upon a time I was 26 % bf and I thought that was gross.
But also was ? 130# and younger.

And I will say that it's not inevitable that you lose a lot of LBM. I get a dunk test every four months to make sure I'm losing none, or as minimal as possible. Last year, I lost over sixty pounds of fat, and only two pounds of LBM. My goal is to lose no more than five pounds of LBM by the time I get to goal.

It also helps me make sure my goal weight is still appropriate. My LBM is 153 pounds, so it wouldn't make sense for me to have a goal of 150 or 160 pounds.

If anyone's interested, this web site - if you know your body fat percentage - will estimate your goal for a desired body fat percentage with both "lossy" (assuming you will lose 5-10% LBM) and lossless (your goal if you did not lose lean body mass) figures (mine are 156 and 164, respectively).Ideal Weight and Calorie Calculator.

My results are very different than the 120 average I get from the height/age calculator results on the left.

Ntombi, I remember your amazing maintenance of lean body mass from earlier threads on this topic, and I hope to do well in this area also! I think your advice was lots of protein, right?

I don't eat lots, but I make sure I average about 120g per day, based on my LBM. I'm not obsessive about it, I'm good doing an average, unlike with my carb amounts, where I never go over my 20g total. I've read that you can't undereat protein more than two days in a row without cannibalizing your own muscle, so I make sure that I get a little more if I didn't the day before. It's pretty easy for me to get enough, on average.

Yeah, I'm still going to be obese, according to BMI, but that's okay, I'll have a lean 22% BF.

Lean body mass is more than muscle it is everything that is not fat including bone, organs, blood volume, which will change with weight loss. I don't have data from the beginning but when I started lifting weights at 258 lbs my LBM was 171.2 but my muscle mass by itself was 78.3. Now at 193.4 my LBM is 161.6 and my muscle mass is 76.5.

So I was able to keep most of my muscle except for 1.8 lbs but lost another 7.8 pounds of non-muscle LBM.

So really loss of LBM is not always a bad thing if you can track the preservation of muscle, and hopefully keep good bone density which weight lifting will help with both along with adequate protein intake.

No, of course it's more than muscle, but my understanding is that people who were obese for a significant period have not only more blood volume, but more blood vessels to carry the blood, and those stay no matter what, so blood volume of formerly obese people who are now at a healthy weight will be higher than those that are a healthy weight but were never obese. I don't know about organs, but clearly, weight training helps retain bone density as well.

I've been told by more than one person in the field that having a goal of losing no more than 5 lbs of LBM is a lofty but achievable goal, given my personal body composition.

Glad you had it done! I love that, and I can't wait until the mobile unit comes back up closer to me so I can do it again.
I also adjusted my goal 16# upwards after my body fat testing. I can't wait to see how its changed since I started lifting!

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*****************************************My Potato Hacking JournalAll I ask is that you lead an evidence-based life.

I use the same company as Christina, with the truck that travels throughout the LA area, south of the 110. It's convenient going to the same truck, because they keep track of all your data, and your printout will show your progress from the beginning.

If anyone's interested, this web site - if you know your body fat percentage - will estimate your goal for a desired body fat percentage with both "lossy" (assuming you will lose 5-10% LBM) and lossless (your goal if you did not lose lean body mass) figures (mine are 156 and 164, respectively).Ideal Weight and Calorie Calculator.

My results are very different than the 120 average I get from the height/age calculator results on the left.

Just did mine and took a screenshot of it. Very different!

Similar to your results, in that it was quite a bit higher than on the left. Like, 176 vs a to weight of 144.

I know if I go under 150, people will ask if I'm sick... So I'll keep targeting 160, and see what things look like around 170.

Mine was 191 and 200 for 23% body fat, which is my current goal. Of course I like the latter number best, because it means I have fewer than 100 pounds to lose, but I'll see what happens when I'm closer to goal.

Scale weight isn't my goal, anyway, I just have that up because it's easier; my goal is really to get to 23% body fat. That's lean and at the low end of healthy for my age and activity level.